Random Real Estate Thoughts

12 Phrases Folks Googled & Got to my Blog

by John Rice

One of my favorite things to do is see the phrases people google and got to my site.  Some of them help me with picking blog topics, and some of them just give me a good laugh.  I thought I might share some of them with you today:

1)  How do I know what school district I am in?  That is an easy one, go to this site: http://www.fcps.net/tools/street-directory.

2)  What is the worst time to sell in Lexington Ky?  Uhhhhhhhh, like right now dude.

3)  Is Gainesway Drive in Lexington Ky a very busy street?  Yes it is.

4)  What does C.M.A mean?  It stands for Comparative, or Comparable Market Analysis.  It is basically taking a few recent sales from your area to determine the value of your house by cutting and pasting value for ways your house is better or worse than the comparable sale houses.  You’re really just using a known value to determine a probable value.

5)  Lexington Ky find sex:  I imagine THIS person didn’t hang around my site for very long, and I also imagine we might find him on another useful site, which is the Ky Sex Offender Registry…..Since I have a link on my blog, that is how this person probably found my site!

6)  Will house prices in Lexington Ky go up?  I think it is going to take inflation to make the prices go up in the near future, sorry.  Not only do we have supply and demand working against us, there has also been a mental shift in how people perceive their home.  It seems most people no longer view it primarily as an investment or an ATM machine, but as a place to live and build some equity along the way.

7)  My Lexington Ky realtor sucks, what should I do?  This one is easy…….call me!

8)  Previous sale prices in Beaumont Enclave:  Do what I do when I need that kind of info, hit the PVA site and scroll through previous sales at   http://fayettepva.com/Search/Disclaimer2.aspx?FromUrl=../Search/GenericSearch.aspx?mode=address.

9)  Is the Hamburg area a safe place to live?  I think so, but go to the crime map to see for yourself at http://crimewatch.lfucg.com/.

10)  Lexington Ky Realtor Rice “God Loves You John”:  Thanks whoever you are, I already know that, but I do appreciate being reminded 🙂

11)  What to leave in the house after the sale:  Well, you leave anything that was written on the contract.  In our area we usually write down everything the buyer wants that is attached to the house but could easily be unscrewed or removed.  Usually these items are things like ceiling fans, window blinds/treatments, garage door openers and remotes, range, dishwasher, sometimes the fridge, sometimes shelving.  The more you write down and the less you assume, the better it is at the end.  Nobody likes drama.

12)  Lexington Ky single ladies over 60:  I know I am the LEXpert, but this one has me stumped.  I’ll ask my mom where her single friends hang out.

So, these are some of the better ones.  If you have a LEXington question, feel free to give me a shout, but let’s keep it about real estate please 😉

How to Handle a Low Offer When All You Want to Say is “REALLY??”

by John Rice

I’m siting on my couch last night, watching Monk and trying to relax.  See, my phone chirps, buzzes and rings from the time I wake up until about 9-9:30 at night.  That last couple hours of my day is my chill time.  So, when I got a call at 10:30 from another Realtor, I was a little surprised.

Turns out this agent had an offer she wanted to send me and needed my fax number.  It was right on the email I had sent her earlier, but nobody ever seems to think to look at that I guess.  She then called me just after midnight…..I was in bed.

I was pretty excited to get an offer for a house that hadn’t been on the market but about 2 weeks, especially since she was up so late working on it.  My excitement turned to shock when I got the offer.  It was for nearly $40k less than the asking price…….and this isn’t a $600k listing, so it was really low.  I mean LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!

As an agent, when this happens you really want to scream at the other agent and ask them why they are wasting everybody’s time, especially their own, with  a buyer who thinks there is a chance he can buy a move-in ready house for less than foreclosure money, but, you bite your tongue, put on the biggest fake smile you can muster, and thank them.

A lot of people are writing low offers these days, but it seems like about 1 in 20 are in what I call the “Crazy Loooooow” category.  What do you do with one like that?  You treat it just like you would any offer you need to counter.  The sellers instinct is to flat out reject the offer, but you never know  if the buyer is just testing the waters or they are crazy.  I tell people let’s give them a little bit of our time to see if they are realistic or not.  Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t.  I sold a listing last week where the buyer started out loow, but not loooooooow.  We got that one worked out with within a few counter-offers.

Now, about this offer strategy.  It is really counter productive for the buyer.  I’ve blogged about that before, but the bottom line is that the seller is always expecting the buyer to come back, and back, and back.  That means the seller never really shows the buyer their bottom dollar since they always want a little reserve budgeted into their counter-offer.

I should know later today if this buyer is legit or if he is a dreamer.  It is like musical chairs:  I don’t know if we’ll be out or if we will win, but you have to keep moving until the music stops.

SI Drive? Level Side walks? Curtains that Convey? Really??

by John Rice

About a year ago, my wife decided she wanted a Subaru Outback.  We looked at a few on used car lots.  I did a lot of research to find out what trim level we had to get for her to have the sunroof and heated leather seats that she wanted.  There really weren’t a lot of used Outbacks in or around Lexington at that time.  Then, one day, I found a classified ad that said “2008 Subaru Outback, SI Drive” with the price and the seller’s phone number.  Not a lot of info to work with.  Definitely nothing to make the guy’s phone start ringing.  But to me, this car having “SI Drive” told me a whole lot more about it.  Having done a lot of research, I knew that was only offered on the top trim level, having the giant sunroof, heated leather interior, and the bigger engine.  When we went to see the car, all the seller kept talking about the “SI Drive”.  I could tell it was very important to him.

A lot of home sellers are like that too.  They want to focus on what is important to them when selling their house, rather than focusing on things that are important to the buyer.  I see it a lot in marketing remarks of For Sale By Owner houses.  I once read a flyer where the seller spent a lot of space talking about how level the sidewalks are and never mentioned that his model of house had an open floor plan, which is something that is important to most buyers these days……especially since anybody picking up the flyer can see what is outside of the house, but knows nothing about the inside yet?

I sold a house to a family that I have since become friends with.  They found the house by driving around the neighborhood.  They would have never come to see it if they had only seen it online.  Why?  Because of the marketing remarks.  Instead of mentioning the hardwood floors, instead of mentioning that one of the upstairs bedrooms was huge, or that there were bedrooms on both levels of the house, or that the backyard was an awesome park-like oasis, the agent used that space to tell you that the exterior was maintenance free, that the curtains stayed with the house, and that there was an allowance for water-proofing the basement as well as mitigating radon……..Hardly anything to make somebody fall in love with a house that had a leaking basement and a high radon level!  The marketing remarks could only have been better if they said  “Must see!……You get to keep the seller’s curtains AND fix some major problems with this house, but at least you’ll never have to paint the outside!!  NOT a drive by!”

The hardest thing about real estate is getting sellers to think like a buyer and a buyer to think like a seller.  I think if that ever were to happen, I’d probably be out of a job!  Being a realtor these days is as much about mediation, negotiation and understanding differing perspectives as it is about houses.

BTW, “SI Drive” is a feature that has 3 settings for throttle response and transmission shift points.

Same Room. Different Pictures. Which One Would You Use to Sell Your House?

by John Rice

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I’m gonna make this a short post.  Know why?  Because most people would rather look at pictures than read about a house.   That’s why having terrific pictures online when you sell your house is so important.

Both of those pictures you see on the slide show are of the same room.  One was taken when another agent had the house listed.  It didn’t sell.  The other one was taken when I listed the house and sold it not too long afterwards.

How to Negotiate (And How NOT to Negotiate)

by John Rice

I just came out of one of the most frustrating negotiations I have ever encountered.  An agent brought me an offer on one of my listings that not only was contingent on the sale of the buyer’s property, but also had a pre-closing occupancy agreement.  Long story short, this all meant that the buyer wanted to move in before the closing AND there was a slight chance that something could go wrong with the sale of her house….meaning we could have a real mess on our hands unless everything worked out just perfectly.

Naturally, my clients and I were concerned most about what could go wrong and how it would work out if  did.  That is where some negotiation skills on the part of the other agent could have made us more likely to go along with it.  If you’ve read many of my posts, you know my dad is a lawyer.  He is the best negotiator I have ever seen.  Many people (like the other agent) think negotiating is about strong-arming the other party to do what you want, or wearing them down like a used car sales person.  My dad taught me that negotiating is really about removing obstacles so the other party can say yes to you.

If I was this agent, I think I would have first put myself in the shoes of the other party and asked myself what are their obstacles going to be?  Like anybody, the sellers were nervous about what could go wrong, more than they were drawn to what could go right.  If I were the other agent, I would have given me a pre-approval letter from the buyer.  Heck, I might have even given me the pre-approval letter from the buyer’s buyer that the whole offer hinged upon.  I might have given me a copy of the contract on the other house to show me what type of financing that buyer was doing and how much of a down payment they had.  I might have told me that I would keep tabs on the financing of that buyer and offered to call that loan officer for an update before the buyer for my listing moved in…..just anything to show me and my client that this was more than just a half-baked plan full of nothing but good intentions and wishful thinking.

I didn’t get any of that.  All I got was repetitive comments that deals like this happen all the time (which they don’t), and that the buyer made a full price offer.  The full price offer didn’t really carry much weight since we’d only get that price IF the deal closed, and absolutely nothing if it did.  Just shows the agent didn’t think about removing our obstacles in order to get us to agree to what she wanted.

We tried to work with this deal, but ultimately the agent wouldn’t agree to do much that would answer the “What if” and “How” questions. This agent made it about winning and we all came out losers.